Second Chances
by Cobbledstories
Summary: Moments after the ending of The Dark Descent, Daniel finds himself once more in the ancient Algerian tomb, back in time to a point before everything started to go downhill. Still unable to recall any of his memories from before the events of Amnesia, Daniel must try to adjust to his old self's unfamiliar life- but some things will never change, even across the flow of time...


**Chapter 1**

_"Don't worry, Daniel… it will be all right."_

And then he was staring at a sandstone slab of rock.

He blinked, suddenly aware of his own solidity. The ground was gritty and hard beneath his feet. Dancing torchlight was flickering along the walls. Everything was very sand-colored.

"Daniel?"

The voice was familiar. He spun around, flinching, to see a tall, skinny man with a huge moustache and a sandy archeologist's outfit. Behind the man lurked several others, carrying torches silently.

"It's all yours, Daniel," reminded the man pleasantly. "Are you going to do the honors? Because if you're not, I most certainly will."

"Sorry, Herbert," he forced his mouth to say. "Just a moment."

He didn't recognize the man himself, but he recognized the jovial voice from the distant flashbacks that had possessed his mind. Herbert, then, the expedition leader, or so his journal entries had said. What was happening? This couldn't be another flashback. It was too real, too present. Yet his current situation seemed to be the one described in the notes.

Where was Agrippa?

"Daniel! Hurry along, boy!"

The door, the expedition, the tomb, _the orb and the Shadow within—_

"I—I don't think we should go in there," he blurted out. "I have a bad feeling about this."

Many pairs of eyes stared at him. He shrank back.

"What are you talking about?" chuckled Herbert. "Don't tell me those nonsensical folk tales have chickened you out."

"Folk tales?" He was pushed aside by the eager Herbert, and felt a rising sense of panic, not helped in the least bit by his confusion. _Don't go in, don't go in, what's going on—_

"I suppose I'd better take the lead, then. Raise the door!"

"No, no, please, you don't understand—"

The servants hoisted the slab up and Herbert slunk underneath like a ferret. The hubbub of all the men crowded into this one cave was sending shocks of memory up and down his spine. The noise was ghastly familiar. He weakly clutched at Herbert's jacket in one last attempt to stop him, then shut his eyes as the sounds of his old flashback replayed, this time real and not just a hallucinated memory.

Except…

The slam of the rock shutting off the passage never came. Instead, Herbert emerged from the chamber with a satisfied smile on his face.

"Well," he said, seeming like he was trying to suppress his glee, "here's a nice little trinket for our troubles." And he held up a smooth orb.

The expedition broke out in little appreciative noises and Herbert glanced aside. "Sorry, Daniel. Finders keepers. You should have taken the opportunity when you had it."

He stared uncomprehendingly at the immaculate orb in Herbert's hands as the archeologist swept away.

The rest of the men began to filter into the chamber to proceed with the remainder of archeological dig. He stayed outside, both unwilling to enter the orb's chamber and uncertain as to what he was supposed to be doing here anyways. After a few moments, he suddenly sprinted back up the tunnel to catch up with Herbert.

"Herbert—can I see that orb, for a second?"

The man hesitated, then guffawed good-naturedly and passed it to him. "But of course."

The heavy ball weighed down on his hands. He looked at its surface and ran his fingers over it. There was something wrong about it. It didn't have the same shifting, moving appearance as the orb he had reconstructed from the pieces in the torture rooms. Nor did it feel the same way. To be honest, it looked and felt just like a blue, polished, spherical rock.

Herbert was looking a bit impatient, so he handed it back with a mumbled thanks. As soon as he did so, his knees gave out and he fell to the floor.

"Daniel! Daniel, are you all right?" crowed Herbert's voice in his ear, and he groaned as hands pulled him to his feet again. Somehow, Herbert looked more relieved than concerned.

"You're acting a little strange… you're not sick, are you?"

"I… I don't know."

"You know, I think all this heat might have gotten to you after all, Daniel. The archeologist clapped him on the back. If you're feeling a bit off, maybe you should retire from the expedition, and go back to England for some rest."

How could he explain that the concept of 'rest' was not one available to him anymore? "Maybe…"

Herbert chuckled obnoxiously again. "I told you to use that parasol!"

The reference conjured up the memory of his own voice, petulant and stubborn, arguing over the parasol with Herbert like it was something that mattered. Where was he when he had experienced that flashback? Somewhere in the Back Hall? He cracked a smile, and Herbert seemed to take it as affirmation.

"Excellent. I'll have someone set off for England with you as soon as possible. You've been working very hard, Daniel. You deserve a break."

_Understatement of the century, Herbert._

Some men escorted him back to the camp site—in case he collapsed again, Herbert had said. At this point he really could care less, but to be honest it was probably a good thing anyways since he would never have been able to find the way on his own. Lying in the personal tent they had said was his, he spent two hours going through the meager amount of possessions over and over again, looking for clues or something to spark a memory. There was only one thing he recognized: a writing journal filled with yellow pages. The entries included were exactly the same as he had remembered them, but they stopped at May 20, just as young Daniel of Mayfair described with excitement how tomorrow they would descend into the tomb. On the next page, he knew, a bewildered and frightened account of his mystical encounter with the orb should follow. But there were only blank pages from then on.

_Of course,_ he thought. _None of the other events have happened yet._

But the moment of discovering the orb had deviated from the history outlined in the notes he found in Brennenburg. And it was that moment which had triggered his following nightmarish descent to the point when the old Daniel had drunk the amnesia potion and the new Daniel had found himself in a drafty old castle with no memories left to him.

So would that all still happen?

Had they ever happened at all?

The more he thought on it, the more confused he became. If he was really was now back before the events at Brennenburg had ever happened, why could he still not remember his previous life? Could the amnesia potion last across a jump through time? And since things were occurring differently than the description of the expedition in his journal, might he be able to avoid the fate he had already been subjected to?

Or… had pre-amnesia Daniel lied?

During his panicky trek through the dark castle, he had taken the words in his own handwriting on the scattered journal pages as solid fact. Why? Well, there wasn't any reason not to! But eventually he had learned exactly what his past self had become over the course of his stay at Brennenburg. Should he really trust someone like that with telling the truth, regardless of whether that 'someone' happened to be himself?

But there was no reason for his past self to lie about the events leading up to his corruption; the account he had left was appalling enough, and the various visions he had experienced had confirmed most of what he read.

Was all of it a dream, then?

The thought was hopeful and he quickly pushed it aside. No nightmare, despite all of its supernatural and implausible elements, could ever be as real as the reality of his terror-wracked descent through Brennenburg. Even now it seemed much more real than the slow, uneventful, ordinary present which he found himself suddenly living.

_My name is Daniel, of Mayfair…_

He ran his hands through his dusty hair, pressing against his scalp, squeezing his eyelids shut, but he knew it was no use. His memory seemed permanently damaged after all—_from a potion I took in the so-called future, goddammit! _Still a near-total amnesiac. All he had left was Brennenburg.

What a terrible thought.

He dropped the journal, trembling, and reached for his other possessions once more to try and glean more knowledge of himself from them. The journal pages in Brennenburg gave him most of the information he needed in the context of that awful place, but now that he was outside, in the real world, he couldn't try to live an ordinary life without knowing what life he was living.

Folded up at the bottom of his bag was a worn piece of paper. He smoothed it out on the tent floor. It was a charcoal sketch of a girl in profile. With it came a lock of brown hair tied in a green ribbon.

He touched the hair uncomfortably. This might complicate things. Was he engaged, or otherwise attached to someone? If she was waiting for him in England, how on earth would he handle it, having no memory of their relationship? On a second, hurried glance at the sketch, he noted that the girl seemed to be actually quite young, probably only a teenager. A sister, then, most likely.

To his relief this was confirmed only a day later when Herbert, saying goodbye, tossed a gold locket at him and said, "You wanted to bring this back to your sister, yes? I'm sorry I borrowed your little present; just wanted to record it in the excavation files."

He mumbled something about being grateful and pocketed the necklace. Hopefully he'd be able to figure out where and who his sister was when he arrived in England.

_Hazel_, said some fragment of Daniel in the back of his shattered mind. He stepped into the shade of his tent and began packing his things. _Hazel._


End file.
